SeeItYourWay Launches First Ever Photo-Quality Home Design Site

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Site expected to pioneer home décor shopping method of the future. Opens new advertising platform for vendors.

If I have ten customers in my store and nine salesmen, I basically lost a customer. If a kiosk can replace a salesman, that would add tremendous value to my business. This is the only program out there that I feel has that capability to sell.

Lakewood, NJ (PRWEB)August 27, 2008

SeeItYourWay, a technology company based in central New Jersey, announced the launch of SeeItYourWay.com, the web's first site to enable users to choose and preview every part of a room's décor and furnishings simultaneously in an impressive and photo-realistic room setting. In contrast to today's standard design programs that show artificial-looking CAD, SeeItYourWay's use of real pictures significantly eliminates the dreaded guesswork involved in home décor style and color coordination.

Because users are viewing real products, SeeItYourWay can direct potential buyers to vendors who carry the actual items shown. This provides for a smooth and targeted marketing system that is both cost-efficient and effective, and has excited customers, retailers, and manufacturers across the US. Beta testing found that customers feel more familiar, knowledgeable, and emotionally attached to their selections once they have designed their rooms themselves. That makes them more confident and comfortable when they head for a retailer to place orders for the rooms they have created.

Vendors in turn don't have to spend as much time selling their products. And because SeeItYourWay's database contains mainly high-end products, customers are coming in with a high-end mindset. Says Marissa McIntyre, Design Center Manager at Paramount Homes, "Our sales team no longer needs to convince customers that a pricey European-style oven hood will dramatically improve the look of their kitchen. Now the question is only, 'Will it be the Thermador or the Dacor?'"

SeeItYourWay presently allows users to design a kitchen's cabinet style and color, countertops, flooring, backsplashes, appliances, lighting fixtures, window treatments, faucets, bar stools, counter top accents, and virtually anything a consumer is looking for in a kitchen. The database currently consists of today's popular upper-class styles and brands and will grow based on feedback and on the input of manufacturers advertising their products by placing it in SeeItYourWay's library. The site features preset design scenes, item-detail information, high-resolution printing, emailing, saving, search capability, and an Enlarge button that shows a very impressive version of the room being designed. SeeItYourWay is working on additional kitchen layouts, other rooms and exteriors, and new features like comparison slide shows, a Designer section, "green" scenes, audio sales pitching, and more.

While CAD systems allow for multiple configurations that give a "glorified blueprint" of a room's layout, the scenes lack any semblance of reality. The patent-pending technology created by SeeItYourWay enables picture-perfect scenes, yet limits the number of layout options. Given the benefits each system has to offer, vendors are starting to use them together. "CAD systems are great tools for customers, but SeeItYourWay is a great tool for store owners," says Rebecca Birnhack of RB Design. "If you want to wow a customer into buying a particular product, you're not doing it with CAD. I tell my customers, choose your kitchen options with SeeItYourWay, then go spec it out with 2020."

During beta-testing vendors also realized SeeItYourWay's whopping staying power, averaging more than 12 minutes per visit. After recognizing this "stickiness," and the fact that nearly all the visitors are actual buyers in spending-mode, vendors requested more advertising opportunities. This prompted SeeItYourWay to build a zip code-based vendor directory, which will be prominently displayed alongside their main page early next month. Samuel Reichmann, Vice President of Olympia Tile, Canada's largest tile manufacturer, observed that while sites such as MySpace.com and Facebook.com may have similar per-visit staying power, because they are not e-commerce sites, their value to retailers is not as great.

Custom SeeItYourWay sites are also being licensed to several retailers to be used in showroom kiosks, as well as to a major online vendor who will use it to help "cross-sell" the various types of kitchen items it offers. As one New York store owner put it, "If I have ten customers in my store and nine salesmen, I basically lost a customer. If a kiosk can replace a salesman, that would add tremendous value to my business. This is the only program out there that I feel has that capability to sell."

Given such feedback and the huge potential inherent in a program like this, SeeItYourWay is poised to become a key player in the future of high-tech advertising.